Thursday, February 21, 2013

The
Nintendo eShop has some pretty nice games out there already, but most
of them lack that console quality polish that people are used to
seeing in bigger games, such as Mario or Metroid.
Enter Liberation Maiden, a game developed by SUDA 51 and
produced by Level 5. Liberation Maiden was one of the games
developed to be a part of the Guild01 compilation
of games. For those not familiar with Guild01,
it was a 3DS cartridge containing four different games made by four
different developers. Liberation
Maiden was one of
those games, and two of the other four, Aero
Porter and Crimson
Shrowd, are also now on
the Nintendo 3DS eShop

Now,
then back to the game at hand. Yes, I said that this game was
made by SUDA 51, and no, it is not your typical SUDA 51 game.
Unlike his most recent games which were very much mature and
jammed pack full of sexual innuendos and violence, this is
definitely one of SUDA 51's more normal games. So, the story
goes as this: it is the future and your character, named Shoko Ōzora,
has just been elected President of New Japan. As her first
order of business, Shoko heads off on her mech called the Kaihoki
Kamui, or Liberation Maiden, to free Old Japan from the harmful
technology that has eaten up all of the nature of Old Japan. Yeah,
the story sounds a bit weird, but the funny thing is that it sounds
normal for something that comes from the mind of SUDA 51.

So
the gameplay takes you across five levels in an action-shooter type
of game. You control the Kamui with the Circle Pad and then
lock on/take aim at your targets with the stylus. To fire, you
release the stylus from the touch screen, and you will shoot at
whatever the Kamui was locked onto. Sounds simple, right?
Well, you need to manage how many shots you fire, as the energy
that allows you to take your shots also acts as your shield. If
you take damage, it will take away your ability to fire a ton of
shots and to shield you from oncoming damage. If you fire too
many shots, you will leave yourself vulnerable for taking direct
damage, so you really do not want to get hit too often. The
good news is that defeating enemies adds to your shield/ammunition.

The
game is fun for what it is, but most of the missions are to just find
and destroy smaller enemies to reveal a semi-big enemy, before you
can make your way to the boss fight at the end. Along the way,
you can complete extra side missions for some extra points. These are
entirely optional, but undoubtedly required to get that high score.
However, the five levels do not like to stray too far from the
basic find- all-enemies-and-destroy-them mechanic. The levels
will try to do something such as a stealth mission, but these slight
changes to the gameplay only last so long, and quickly revert back to
the sane old fast-paced shooting action.

Overall,
Liberation Maiden is an excellent game, and it shows the potential of
what the Nintendo eShop can deliver. Some complaints are a
control scheme that tailors to right-handed people and ignores
left-handed people such as myself, and the gameplay can get a bit
repetitive. However, the game is still so much fun to play. It
might not be something that people would turn to very frequently, but
every now and then, it can provide some quick fun.